Beautiful pictures!

Thank you
NancyTree
CODawn

It was wonderful to be able to get out and just sit and enjoy that for a bit.

December 4:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 591
French: - consecutive day 389
YTT: - consecutive day 24
Asana: - consecutive day 25
Art:
GBOT:


hiking: 3.2 km
workout w. Norma : 40 minutes - Day 625
dolphin-a-day: 2 minutes - Day 100
yoga flow: 19 minutes
French study: Netflix ("Rita")
YTT: recorded Q&A
Art: nothin'

December 5:

GOBOT: - up at 6:00 to play Wingspan with sleep_twitch and 'rin
Exercise: - consecutive day 592
French: - consecutive day 390
YTT: - consecutive day 25
Asana: - consecutive day 25
Art:
GBOT:


hiking: 2 km
workout w. Norma : 37:30 - Day 626
dolphin-a-day: 1 minute - Day 101*
daily peacock: 1 minute - Day 1*
yoga flow: 4 minutes - just a few sun sals (part of my Sunday workouts with Norma are also yoga)
French study: Netflix ("Rita") + correspondence**
YTT: recorded Q&A
Art: nothin'

* I have decided to continue my dolphin-a-day practice for a further 100 days and also to commit to 100 days of daily work on feathered peacock pose (a.k.a.: forearm balance/pincha mayurasana)

** Avec une amie en France qui est bilingue mais qui tolère gracieusement mes tentatives de communiquer dans sa langue maternelle. This day's exchange included a discussion on the importance of context, on account of a couple of my mangled attempts at literal translations of English expressions. Elle m'a dit que son exemple préféré pour illustrer l'importance du contexte pour ses étudiants en ALS est le mot anglais "duck".

Bravo pour le français, et continue bien!

Merci PetiteSheWolf

December 6:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 593
French: - consecutive day 391
YTT: - consecutive day 26
Asana: - consecutive day 26
Art:
GBOT:


hiking:
workout w. Norma : 41 minutes - Day 627
dolphin-a-day (Day 102) + daily peacock (Day 2): 3 minutes
yoga: restorative
French study: Netflix ("Rita")
YTT: recorded Q&A
Art: nothin'

December 7:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 594
French: - consecutive day 392
YTT: - consecutive day 27
Asana: - consecutive day 27
Art:
GBOT:


hiking: 2 km
workout w. Norma : 31 minutes - Day 628
dolphin-a-day (Day 103) + daily peacock (Day 3): 3 minutes
yoga: dancing
French study: Netflix ("Rita")
YTT: recorded Q&A
Art: nothin'

December 8:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 595
French: - consecutive day 393
YTT: - consecutive day 28
Asana: - consecutive day 28
Art:
GBOT:


hiking:
workout w. Norma : 29 minutes - Day 629
dolphin-a-day (Day 104) + daily peacock (Day 4): 4 minutes - included some peacock push-ups
yoga: inversions workshop, restorative
French study: Netflix ("Rita"), Fluenz 3.22, 3.23
YTT: forearm balance breakdown + practice
Art: Gettin' Sketchy

December 9:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 596
French: - consecutive day 394
YTT: - consecutive day 29
Asana: - consecutive day 29
Art: - consecutive day 2
GBOT:


hiking: 2 km
workout w. Norma : 40 minutes - Day 630
dolphin-a-day (Day 105) + daily peacock (Day 5): 2 minutes - included some peacock push-ups
yoga: "Feel Good"
French study: Netflix ("Rita"), Fluenz 3.23
YTT: sequencing Q&A, pose breakdown discussion
Art: Ink Wash video, star system poster

December 10:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 597
French: - consecutive day 395
YTT: - consecutive day 30
Asana: - consecutive day 30
Art: - consecutive day 3
GBOT:


hiking: 3.6 km

workout w. Norma : 42:30 - Day 631 - we interrupt our usual programming for a week of baking ornaments for the DARETREE. This day we still did Pathfinder, since it mostly fit in with our DARETREE workout. We also did our usual feet and hands mobility work for Fridays. Ironheart, however, was skipped.

The DARETREE workout = 5 sets of:

5 burpees
30 jacks
10 push-ups
30 side kicks
100 punches

On this day we also added in 40 knee strikes per set, to complete the Day 8 Pathfinder workout. Also: I messed up and forgot we were supposed to be doing jacks. So we did 30 squats per set for the first 3 sets. I realized we were doing the wrong exercise halfway through set #3. So we did squats and jacks for that set, then 60 jacks for each of the last two sets to get caught up. I'm hoping Norma will appreciate that our workouts for the remainder of the week will be a bit easier as a result of my goofs on this day. (Also: the standard schedule has us finishing the push-ups requirement in only 4 days--good for me, because I am doing full push-ups, which are still quite hard for me--and leaves us with a lighter day for both jacks and side kicks on the final day--which should make Norma happy, because she still hates kicking.)

dolphin-a-day (Day 106) + daily peacock (Day 6): 2 minutes - included some peacock push-ups
yoga: restorative
French study: Netflix ("Rita")
YTT: Dual Actions Q&A
Art: star system poster

I need to get serious about GOBOT and GBOT. I was almost back on track this day. But then I got angry about something and then stayed up playing Wingspan all night to make myself feel better instead of going to bed. (I had every right to be angry about the thing that made me angry. But it is a regular occurrence in my life. Completely screwing over a healthy sleep schedule is probably not the healthiest way to deal with a problem I face on an almost daily basis.)

December 11:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 598
French: - consecutive day 396
YTT: - consecutive day 31
Asana: - consecutive day 31
Art: - consecutive day 4
GBOT:


hiking: 0 km

workout w. Norma : 40:20 - Day 632 - Posture, plus our DARETREE workout.

The DARETREE workout = 5 sets of:

5 burpees
30 jacks
10 push-ups
30 side kicks
100 punches

dolphin-a-day (Day 107) + daily peacock (Day 7): 5 minutes
yoga: standing balances
French study: Netflix ("The Unforgiveable")
YTT: Fit Flow Fly
Art: star system poster

December 12:

GOBOT:
Exercise: - consecutive day 599
French: - consecutive day 397
YTT: - consecutive day 32
Asana: - consecutive day 32
Art: - consecutive day 5
GBOT:


hiking: 6 km - gave Trudy an anti-inflammatory pill with her breakfast, and she was a changed dog. Insisted on doing her full walk, and then did the entire route with no breaks! So happy to see her so full of life again. Had to give Shelby her full walk too, since other dog got it. (They are very jealous of one another, and I suspect Shelby has a good enough sniffer to know which way her sister walked 45 minutes earlier.)

workout w. Norma : 32 minutes - Day 633 - Back Pain Relief, plus our DARETREE workout.

The DARETREE workout = 5 sets of:

5 burpees
30 jacks
10 push-ups
30 side kicks
100 punches

dolphin-a-day (Day 108) + daily peacock (Day 8): 2 minutes
yoga: Back Pain Relief plus a few minutes of restorative
French study: Netflix ("Rita")
YTT: Fit Flow Fly
Art: funky sphere

I did some soul searching over the weekend, contemplating the questions:

"WTF am I doing with my life?"

and:

"HIH am I ever going to GTHOOD?"
(where "Dodge" = the Booming Metropolis, a.k.a. a town I do not like living in and desperately do not want to still be stuck in when I am old)

I came to the conclusion that I need to get back to my writing. The problem with this is that, in order for me to get any meaningful amount of writing work done, I require two things:

1. to be mentally alert
2. uninterrupted time in blocks of 60 minutes duration at a minimum

The odds of my having hour-long stretches of uninterrupted time prior to 8 PM in my current living situation are close to zero.
Similarly, the odds of my having enough brain power left by that hour to do good writing are also slight. (Not to mention the fact that I'm usually still dealing with dishes, kitchen clean-up, walking my dogs, and whatever other tasks I still need to accomplish for the day at that time.)

For a while I was getting good writing work done in a quiet study room at my local public library. But more and more often the space was being used for tutoring school children who were too distracted by all of the talking that goes on constantly in the main area of the library to be able to concentrate there. I understand the kids' challenge as I had the same experience trying to work in the main area of the library myself. Which is why I had written to library management in the first place to ask that a room which had been relegated to junk storage be converted into a quiet study space. The problem with the space being used for tutoring, however, was that the children and their tutors were constantly talking to one another, which rendered the "quiet study" room no longer quiet and just as distracting as the rest of the library! This was the same time that my presbyopia started to get too bad for me to be able to read my tiny SurfacePro screen without corrective eyewear. I tried reading glasses. But they irritated my face. And the fluorescent lighting in the library irritated my eyes. (When I was alone in the quiet study room I had always turned the fluorescent lights off, but the school tutors invariably turned them back on again.) And the school children and their tutors made it impossible for me to get any work done anyhow. So I gave up.

I"ve been trying for 3 years now to fashion a life for myself without writing. It's not working. I need to get back to my writing. And I need to be able to do it at home. But the same constraints of my living situation which drove me to the library in the past remain. What to do?

I need to get serious about GBOT so I can get serious about GOBOT because, if I have had enough sleep, I have plenty of brain power for writing first thing in the morning, and the only time other than late evening when I am (usually) able to secure uninterrupted work time, is before 8AM. So this is my new plan: GBOT. GOBOT. Wake up my body with an early morning asana practice (which has been suffering because I HATE being interrupted while I'm getting my yoga on so much that most days I just don't do it). Wake up my brain with a quick-to-prepare and easy-to-eat-at-my-desk source of blood sugar. And be BICHOK by 7AM every day. (Except for gaming days. Gaming with sleep_twitch and 'rin is too important to me to give up. But this is okay as it only happens on weekends when my mother spends a lot more time watching television. So I am able to secure uninterrupted writing time in the late morning/early afternoon when my brain is still fresh enough to get the work done on those days.)

So... going forward I will be tracking a new item as part of my levels system: Writing.

= I achieved BICHOK by 7AM and successfully remained focussed on my writing work for at least one hour (or until interrupted by forces beyond my control--which is unusual prior to 8AM but does sometimes happen).
= I failed BICHOK by 7AM and/or allowed myself to be distracted by non-writing tasks prior to 8AM but still somehow managed to squeeze an hour's worth of writing work out of my day.
= I got a minimum of 30 minutes of writing work done. (I'm typically not terribly productive in such short blocks of time. But it's still better than nothing.)


Also: I have now completed all of the training requirements for "The Practice" portion of my YTT and am moving on to "The Teaching" effective today. My new levels for YTT will be:

- minimum of 15 minutes work on my YTT
- minimum of 30 minutes work on my YTT, including a practice teach
- minimum of 60 minutes work on my YTT, including recording and assessing a practice teach*

* Filming video of myself is a time-consuming PITA and not always possible during the winter. So I expect I will be doing a lot of audio-only recording. But on days when I manage to get a practice teach video recorded, I may put it up on YouTube and provide you lovely Bees with the link to check it out. These are likely to be very short sessions (maybe only 5 minutes in length). And don't expect a beautiful backdrop (if I can fit my head and my feet in the frame at the same time shooting in my current space, it's a win!). But these little yoga quickies might be fun all the same.